SFO Director announces retirement – GOV.UK

Nick Ephgrave QPM, the Director of the Critical Fraud Workplace (SFO), will retire on the finish of March.

The choice comes after 38 years serving the general public, holding senior roles in UK regulation enforcement, with the Metropolitan and Surrey police forces in addition to the Nationwide Police Chiefs’ Council.

He’ll stay in submit till the top of March throughout which time an interim Director will likely be appointed pending a proper recruitment course of for his successor.

Nick Ephgrave stated:

It’s with nice delight that I replicate on the big progress the SFO has made within the final two and a half years.

We now have achieved extra issues, extra shortly than even I assumed attainable thanks totally to the passion, dedication and can-do perspective from everybody on the SFO.

I’m sure that the momentum now we have created will proceed to propel the organisation ahead to greater and higher issues.

I wish to thank every colleague for his or her assist and laborious work, with out which none of this might have occurred.

Mr Ephgrave got down to redefine the ambition and scope of the SFO, overseeing a concentrate on proactivity, innovation and tempo. This has included a sharper, quicker casework method, the usage of synthetic intelligence and machine studying in assist of improved disclosure apply and the creation of a crypto-asset functionality.

Successes throughout his tenure embody bringing fees towards 5 males for complicated fraud offences linked to the collapse of regulation agency Axiom Ince in simply 15 months, the quickest in the organisation’s historical past.

Final month, a responsible plea was secured from the director of an organization that offered plane engine components with solid documentation simply two years after launching an investigation.

As well as, the SFO continues to be a number one companion in world anti-corruption work. Of specific significance is the founding of the primary worldwide Anti-Corruption Prosecutorial Taskforce, delivering an enhanced operational partnership between key European companions.

From the outset, Mr Ephgrave has championed the incentivisation of whistleblowers to drive up referral charges and improve company prosecutions. In current weeks the Authorities dedicated to assessing the feasibility of monetary incentive schemes for these reporting financial crime as a part of its new UK Anti-Corruption Technique.

Nick Ephgrave added:

I shall miss the job and SFO colleagues so very a lot however will replicate on the progress now we have made along with delight and satisfaction.

I imagine now we have achieved what we got down to do: create a rejuvenated SFO that’s sturdy, assured, dynamic and pragmatic. It has a fair higher future forward.

Lawyer Normal Richard Hermer KC stated:

I need to pay the warmest of private {and professional} tributes to Nick Ephgrave as he retires after a protracted profession in public service.

Nick introduced over three a long time of police expertise to the Critical Fraud Workplace and as Director, he modernised the organisation’s method to tackling critical fraud, bribery and corruption, strengthened its capabilities, and secured vital convictions in complicated financial crime instances.

His vitality, experience, integrity, willpower and dedication to public service have left a long-lasting mark on the SFO and on the police forces through which he served. I thank him for his dedication, pay tribute to his household for their assist and need him all of the very greatest for his well-deserved retirement.

Claire Bassett, Chair of the Board, stated:

Nick has led the SFO with super vitality and imaginative and prescient during the last two and a half years, reworking its method to tackling complicated crime.

His legacy is a reinvigorated organisation which is effectively positioned to construct on swifter and more practical approaches to delivering justice.